GRAND RAPIDS ? Michigan serial entrepreneur Keith Brophy has been named the new State Executive Director at the Michigan Small Business Development Center replacing Carol Lopucki who retired at the end of 2014.

The announcement was made Thursday. Brophy had been CEO of IdeoMed, a Spectrum Health start-up in the Life Sciences sector, which recently was assimilated into the hospital group. He was one of a number of candidates interviewed for the post, he said.

?My key vision is to build on the great legacy of SBDC as we step into the next era and work with state businesses to have high impact in the Michigan economy,? Brophy said Friday morning as he was walking into the MI-SBDC headquarters in Grand Rapids on the campus of Grand Valley State University. ?Through this new era you will see us highly visible and very engaged with our partners. SBDC has outstanding metrics and I want to build on those. You?ll see some new innovations from SBDC as well.?

He said further details will be release in the weeks ahead after he has had a chance to brief his staff around the state.

The Michigan Small Business Development Center provides counseling, business education, information based planning and technology commercialization services to Michigan?s new business ventures, existing small businesses, growing businesses and innovators.

It was Lopucki and the MI-SBDC that helped Brophy transition from a software engineer to business owner in 1997 when he started Sagestone computing. The company specialized in advanced software engineering for Microsoft solutions across all verticals, including healthcare, finance and manufacturing.

In 2004, Sagestone was acquired by NuSoft Solutions and Brophy became President of Business Development & Client Services. NuSoft then was acquired in 2008 by RCM Technologies, and Brophy?s new title was General Manager and Vice President of Enterprise Integration Systems. In 2011, Brophy left RCM and started IdeoMed, which made a product called Abriiz, a connected care chronic condition management solution for health insurers and health systems. He began his career in 1985 as a software engineer for IBM, after he earned a bachelor?s of science in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.